Hong Kong led Asia-Pacific stocks on Friday as markets tracked Wall Street gains, with renewed rate cut hopes by the U.S. Federal Reserve bolstering market sentiment.

The Hang Seng index hit its highest level in nine months, up 1.62% after Bloomberg reported regulators were considering a proposal to exempt individual investors from paying taxes on dividends earned from Hong Kong stocks bought via Stock Connect.

In contrast, the mainland China’s CSI 300 lost 0.28%.

Elsewhere, Japan’s overall household spending in March fell 1.2% year on year, less than the 2.4% expected by a Reuters poll of economists. However, on a month-on-month basis, household spending rose 1.2%, compared with estimates of a 0.3% drop.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 0.66%, while the broad-based Topix was 0.74% higher.

South Korea’s Kospi climbed 0.73%, but the small cap Kosdaq slipped 0.58%.

The Australian S&P/ASX 200 also inched up 0.33%.

Overnight in the U.S., all three major indexes climbed as fresh weekly jobless claims data came in at the highest level since August, raising expectations that central bankers might cut interest rates at some point this year.

The 30-stock Dow jumped 0.85% to notch its longest win streak since a nine-day run in December. The S&P 500 added 0.51%, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.27%.

— CNBC’s Brian Evans and Jesse Pound contributed to this report.